Kiran Desai (b. 1971 in Chandigarh, India) was educated in India, England, and the United States, completing an MFA at Columbia University in 1999. Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, received the 1998 Betty Trask Award for being one of the best new novels by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35. In her 2006 novel, The Inheritance of Loss, Desai recreated busy, intersecting tales of immigrants meeting for the first time in the basement kitchens of New York, contrasting their stories with the landscapes left behind. The Inheritance of Loss won the Man Booker Prize in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was translated into over 40 languages. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025.
Desai, who currently lives in New York, is the recipient of many honors. In 2009, she was presented with the Columbia University Medal for Excellence. In 2013-14, she received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2015, The Economic Times listed her among the 20 most influential global Indian women.
Kiran Desai was interviewed by Gyrith Ravn during the annual Louisiana Literature Festival in August 2026.
Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edited by: Nanna Rebekka
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
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